You’d think the BBC would have fact-checkers and editors, and that the British people in general would be pedantic about getting the names of their plants right. At the Taunton Flower Show we find this lovely cactus.
Apart from flowers, visitors could also see a wide range of cacti – this is called Noto Cactus Magnificus.
OK, so what do we see wrong with this? What can be fixed if we want to be as pedantic as we imagine the BBC to be? Why, to start, it would be “Notocactus,” one word. And the species name “magnificus” would be lower case – if we were to get all pedantic on the BBC.
More importantly for you pedants out there, and I’m certainly not talking about myself, because I am no pedant, don’t you know for I fear no run-on sentence, but the genus Notocactus has long been retired and replaced with Parodia. So there.
You can also bookmark this on del.icio.us or check the cosmos
RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URI
August 25th, 2009 at 7:05 am
Has anyone found the other error in the name yet?
August 25th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Just because it’s the BBC, doesn’t mean it’s correct. In more recent times I’ve become more and more disgusted at their news reporting as it’s sometimes so blatently biased. To the point where I turn off their breakfast news programme when they’re berating someone… As if I want to watch someone being slated at 7am?! It’s just not the time nor place for such behaviour, on their question night, yes.
They’ve had articles on animals before and managed to use the wrong images on their website of a different species.
August 25th, 2009 at 12:00 pm
That’s a pretty harsh assessment.